Stop calling it Medicare for All and we will see a serious decrease in "attacks"

[TidalWave46]

From a lot of good democrats. That’s my opinion.

The name M4A is a poor sales gimmick that will now always be linked to one of the most polarizing politicians in the country. I know people in certain circles don’t get this but the guy is simply not trusted by far too many. Calling something that really doesn’t resemble Medicare, Medicare for All, only lowers that trust. the real connection with the name is that it’s single payer.

Single payer. Single payer. Single payer.

I think that within the next month Warren will be releasing her own plan that will include funding mechanisms. With the current hits on her it would be a step few have been willing to take. The closest Sanders has come to that is a five page paper throwing multiple ideas at a wall.

I’m sick of seeing single payer be shit on because of how polarizing Sanders is. Because he decided to put forward a piece of legislation that is nowhere near complete. He literally introduced legislation that was not even close to being finished. He is an activist. Not a legislator.

It’s time for real legislators to do the heavy lifting. Public opinion is shifting because of the excellent work of activists over the decades. That includes Sanders. I truly thank Sanders for his over half century fight in this area.

Single payer needs to be our starting point in the next round of negotiations. People with more legislative depth like Warren need to lead.

Support single payer. If not on the exact details, then the concept itself.

[DrToast]

1. Medicare For All WAS the rebranding of "Single Payer"

Nobody knows what the hell "Single Payer" mean.

And I have news for you, Single Payer or M4A or whatever you want to call it, isn't controversial because of Bernie Sanders.

[wcast]

3. It was also a rebranding of the term socialized health care.

Have to scare the populace by using the socialism bogeyman.

[thesquanderer]

27. Exactly. SP is a scary unknown. "Medicare" is something people understand and like.

It's a brilliant framing, even though it IS single payer and is not actually Medicare quite as people know it. It is a way to positively communicate the concept.

I don't know what percentage of the population associate the phrase specifically with Bernie Sanders, I suspect less than half... but regardless, among Dems, Bernie Sanders has the highest favorable ratings of all our candidates (75%) according to morningconsult. (Biden is second at 73%.) I know, you wouldn't guess that from DU.

[wasupaloopa]

29. It is a way to lie to people!

[thesquanderer]

31. It's not a lie, it's a metaphor.

I see it as similar to when people would say things like "We need a G.I. bill for..." something or a something "new deal." It wouldn't literally be the same as the existing versions of those things, but the phrases communicate a concept.

The Medicare concept is that everyone's health needs are covered by a government-administered program. The details do not need to be identical to the current plan. Heck, the current plan is not identical to the original Medicare implementation, either. Here are changes it has already gone through...

https://www.medicareresources.org/basic-medicare-information/brief-history-of-medicare/

[wasupaloopa]

36. Looks like a lie to me. Call it what you want. It is bait and switch.

SP is a scary unknown. "Medicare" is something people understand and like.

It's a brilliant framing, even though it IS single payer and is not actually Medicare quite as people know it.

[thesquanderer]

39. The bait and switch is, it's not Medicare, it's Medicare but better.

Medicare often pays 80%, where MFA pays 100%. Along with similar improvements in copays and deductibles, MFA negates the need for supplemental or "gap" insurance. And MFA covers things that Medicare does not, like dental. If anything, referring to it as a kind of Medicare program *undersells* it. But the term is conceptually understandable, as a government run health insurance system that covers everybody.

[wasupaloopa]

43. M4A does not exist and never will! It is a paper Bernie wrote and not even complete. It is pie in

the sky. It is a fairy tale.

You act as if it is laying there on the table and all we have to do is implement it. How can so many people be so naive?

You are not going to get rid of the insurance industry, you are not going to force providers to accept Medicare reimbursement rates. You are not going to force people off their employer plans into a government run plan.

If there is to be any new health care legislation it will come from the Congress just as the ACA did. It will be a bipartisan compromise.

[thesquanderer]

45. re: "You act as if it is laying there on the table and all we have to do is implement it."

No, I merely described the proposed plan, and how it justifies its name. I have said absolutely nothing about how likely it is to actually pass. Maybe you mixed me up with someone else.

[gab13by13]

2. I totally agree TidalWave,

I feel the exact same way. We should have kept it known as single payer. A mistake was made branding it MFA, It is not Medicare for all, it will be different than Medicare's provisions.

[randr]

4. Branding and optics are most important if you want to sell anything

[George II]

5. Everyone should get rid of the word "Medicare" in reference to any healthcare insurance plan...

And people have to learn to separate the two aspects of this issue - there is healthcare insurance (a way of paying) and healthcare (a way of treating, curing)

[beachbumbob]

6. healthcare in america is not based on preventative measures as there is money to be made in sick

people and adding more sick peaopl

[TidalWave46]

7. That is where people go wrong.

My kick ass insurance and Dr are all about preventative care. So should everybody else’s.

It’s not that it isn’t based off of preventative care, preventative care through the system is just something that is afforded to those who can afford it.

[beachbumbob]

11. the great majority is not preventative care, Medicaid for instance is reactive and why that

cost is so huge. Requiring smokers to quit, obese people to diet NEVER goes over well in America, as smokers and obsese people are huge profit centers in healthcare industry as a whole

[TidalWave46]

20. Agree. NT

[George II]

8. Not in MY America.

[sheshe2]

44. Sorry, yet you are wrong.

beachbumbob
6. healthcare in america is not based on preventative measures as there is money to be made in sick

That is what your yearly check up, Wellness Visit is with your primary doctor. Preventative Care.

A list, blood pressure check, EKG, tetanus shots, flu shots, eye exams, shingles vaccine, mammograms and bone density, colonoscopy's. My doctor covers all of them as needed and suggests when I am ready to have the tests done by other proffesionals, she prescribes meds when I need them. That is preventative medicine.

Identifying cognitive impairment during the annual exam.
Assessing for cognitive impairment is now mandated as part of the Medicare Annual Wellness Visit.

[book_worm]

10. Too late. The media likes to call it that just like "ObamaCare" is the name they gave

(along with the GOP) to the Affordable Care Act.

[beachbumbob]

13. democrats are simply HORRIBLE at marketing.

Healthcare Freedom Act or the Freedom Healthcare Act

would be my first choices for ANY democratic driven healthcare legislation. Take a play out of the book of our opponents who do know how to market

[Baked Potato]

40. This, I agree with

Last edited Thu Oct 17, 2019, 02:53 PM - Edit history (1)

Trump, for all that he is, is a salesman. He keeps his messaging simple. He knows details invite questions. And, questions need answers. And, answers invite more questions, etc.

I like your Freedom messaging. Freedom works.

[Act_of_Reparation]

12. I think we should call it "ice cream"

A candidate promising everyone ice cream is gonna clean house in the GE.

[beachbumbob]

14. lol, not by those who know they will be paying for the ice cream

why such things don;t play well in middle america

[Act_of_Reparation]

15. I don't think that's accurate.

People in middle America are fine paying for fighter jets that don't work and tax cuts for the rich. They aren't averse to spending money.

[beachbumbob]

17. well assume whatever you want, all I know is we are not a left-center country and

the free give-aways are not free.

[Act_of_Reparation]

18. I don't know what assumption you're referring to...

...but ok.

[wasupaloopa]

30. The assumptiom that Americans want single payer free health care paid for by higher taxes.

What you have been preaching all this time.

[Act_of_Reparation]

33. As I am a very stupid person, I don't recall doing the the thing you said I did.

Would you be so kind as to point out where, exactly, I've been "preaching" this codswallop you accuse me of preaching?

[wasupaloopa]

35. This whole debae is about M4A which you support .

[Act_of_Reparation]

37. Nowhere did I voice support for M4A.

I made a joke about ice cream, and then I challenged the blanket assertion that middle Americans don't want to spend money on things because it's an overly simplistic appraisal of their mentality.

I didn't give my opinion on M4A, much less "preach" it. I don't know what thread you've been reading, but whatever it is it bears little resemblance to the one I participated in.

[TidalWave46]

23. Yep. There isn't much difference. NT

[Hoyt]

16. Don't think changing the name is going to make people more comfortable until they know

exactly what it is going to cost them, and they get to try it through a Public Option to make sure it works as promised.

[TidalWave46]

22. I fully agree with this.

I do think it will greatly help to have it not attached to an individual at this point.

But you main point is what I believe.

[aidbo]

19. Is this the bargaining stage?

[TidalWave46]

21. My apologies, I'm not sure what you mean. NT

[highplainsdem]

24. Rebranding won't help. We can try realistically for a public option, but not with a fake demand

Last edited Thu Oct 17, 2019, 11:31 AM - Edit history (1)

for single payer when everyone knows that has no chance.

There's already a lot of support for the public option, including among Republicans.

As for depth of legislative experience -- the candidate with the most legislative experience and the best record getting legislation passed is Joe Biden.

We owe some of the signature accomplishments of the Obama administration to Biden's ability to talk Republicans over to our side:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1287262162

That Twitter thread refers to the stimulus and the ACA, but from what I've read it's also likely that we'd never have seen Dodd-Frank passed, including the CFPB that Warren's so proud of, without Biden's help getting the necessary votes.

If he's our nominee and he wins, I believe there's a pretty good chance we'll retake the Senate and have a good chance of getting a public option, which may or may not become a stepping stone to single payer, depending on how well it works.

Without Biden's abilities and experience, I would not bet on that much of an advance.

As for Medicare For All or whatever you want to call it... When I polled DUers, who are much more liberal than the average Democrat, on what they thought the chances of getting MFA through Congress would be, even if we somehow managed to elect a Democratic nominee who favored MFA, I found only a very small fraction of DUers believed it was a possibility:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1287226281

[MichMan]

25. It was deliberately framed as MFA because the thought was that everyone loved Medicare

[BlueMississippi]

26. Medicare for all was chosen as an easily understood alternative to single payer

and it turns out that people caught on to it quickly in rejecting it.

[wasupaloopa]

28. No it does not. The ACA is our starting point. We cannot afford single payer. We can't go from here

to there in months or years. It will take a generation before everyone in the USA is covered by a single payer system.

We cannot possibly have enough votes in the Senate to pass single payer. The SCOTUS will have to weigh in on it.

The next Repub Congress and President could repeal it.

Yesterday we learned that single payer would cost $34 Trillion over 10 years.

Any new health care legislation will be a bipartisan compromise in the Congress.

Nobody even knows what a single payer system would look like or how it operates.

You can't force the current system to just melt into the ground and go away.


If you want single payer take time to study it. Write white papers on it. Have independent studies. make it so everyone can understand it. Then if it is a better system it will pass.

But in 2020 it will help trump and hurt us.

[Midnightwalk]

32. Do specifics help?

We talk as if the candidate’s plans will just be submitted to congress, congress will vote them up or down and then we bask in the glory of solving healthcare.

Reality is we first have to win the general elections and then depending on what kind of majority we have we’ll have to figure out what can get enough votes.

Then whatever passes will take 4 to 8 years to start yielding benefits. If we lose intervening elections we risk having whatever we pass overturned or impeded. That’s what happened with ACA. If we had kept congress in 2010 we could have added to it. Instead we’ve barely retained it and it might be overturned by the Supreme Court.

I would have been happier if Warren talked about healthcare as a right and gave us an aspiration of single payer without the commitment to immediately go to medicare for all. I wish she had more wiggle room to counter attacks in the general election and didn’t have to figure out how to come up with 34 trillion in revenue.

Those details don’t help us in the general election and will really not matter when it gets down to writing the actual legislation.

All l needed was something concrete like a public option and prescription drug reform. The goal of getting to single payer would have been enough to make me a fan. We should be trouncing republicans who have absolutely no ideas not defending our aspirations.

Sorry if that seems jaded but most complex things take more than one attempt to be delivered. We never would have gotten to the moon if Kennedy was required to write a comprehensive plan and insisted it be done in a single launch.

[marybourg]

34. Let's just get rid of the entire English language

and go around grunting at each other. Or maybe I just need a break from DU silliness.

[Baked Potato]

38. Specifics and details don't help

It confuses Americans and causes divisions. Just tell voters give us a majority and we’ll fix it. Candidates are crawling over themselves on this issue to stand out. Ask the average American who proposed what and they couldn’t say.

Details are meaningless and forces Candidates to admit to having to raise taxes. Then, we hear “Trillion dollar this” and “Billion dollar that”. There goes them Democrats, raising our damn taxes again!, we’ll hear.

All the Democrats have to keep saying is Republicans systematically degraded the ACA to stop progress. Tell them the Republicans were scared ObamaCare would be popular and successful.

The more we talk details, the worse it will get. Just say we’ll fix it.

[roody]

41. S. 1129

[corbettkroehler]

42. The Genie Is Out Of The Bottle

You may be right. On a related note, I want to see Bernie tighten up several aspects of messaging on healthcare, including the hike in taxes. However, we know for certain that, no matter what we call it, the principle of covering everyone will be decried as Socialism in the general election. We must prepare ourselves.